Title

Author

Graduation Year

2006

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Granting Department

Business Administration

Major Professor

Gabriel Picone, Ph.D.

Keywords

Economics, Health, Drinking, Grades, Human capital

Abstract

There is some controversy over whether adolescent alcohol use has deleterious causal effects on educational outcomes. In particular, does drinking reduce academic performance and school enrollment rates and increase truancy, or does the observed negative correlation between drinking and educational outcomes merely reflect common unobservable factors? This dissertation sheds further light on the issue by estimating the causal impacts of alcohol use on various educational outcomes. Specifically, an instrumental variables model is estimated to study the effects of several drinking measures on grades, school enrollment and absenteeism.